A Little Ditty about the Hateful Homemaker

In my first blog entry I mentioned the "Hateful Homemaker." What I didn't mention is the fact that we go way back. We (I say "we" but I really didn't have anything to do with it, unless you count taking messages, billing and listening to her complain) wired her house a couple of years ago for one of our general contractors. From the beginning she was nothing but a headache. Her name would come up in conversations and collective groans would come from everyone within a 2 foot radius (we obviously aren't the only contractors who she had problems with, or should I say who had problems with her). We completed her house with minimum headaches and thought we were done with her. Oh, how wrong we were.

Sometime last year I got a phone call from the Hateful Homemaker (HH). She had a concern that her outside lights weren't working properly. The bulbs in them were blowing often. She wanted someone to come and check it out. I took the message and gave it to el presidente. Side note: HH's outside lights are at the top of her 2 story house, close to the roof. She called during the dead of winter wanting us to check this out (this will become important later in the story). El presidente filed her concern, called her back and said we would get to it when it warmed up some. Important: It needed to warm up because we were going to have to use an extension ladder to reach the outside lights. Common knowledge leads to the fact that the higher up you go (on a ladder), the colder it gets. A couple of days later, the temperature is about 30 degrees. She calls back, "I really need this done. I have people coming over." We respond, "it's still too cold." She apparently doesn't care. A couple of days later she calls back. El presidente is at his limit. A heat wave finally comes through and the temperature is about 45 degrees. El presidente sends a crew out to her house to check out her problem. The phone at the office rings. Surprise, surprise, it's HH. She wants to know when we are coming. I tell her we are on our way there. She tells me she is on her way also because she wants to monitor them while they check on the problem. Last time I checked they are big boys and don't need to be monitored. That's just my opinion though. Take it for what it's worth. Anyway, back to the story. The guys complete the work and head back to the office. The phone here rings... you got it! HH again! She is livid! Apparently, in her opinion, we didn't protect the ends of our ladders when we leaned them against her precious house and we left blue marks on the side of her house. Lucky me, I answered this phone call. Her house is made of pre-finished, top of the line, limited edition siding. It would be close to impossible to buy paint to match that color and repair our damage. Am I aware of that? Obviously not. I took her message and promised her el presidente would return her call that afternoon. Two things to remember here, 1. Our guys are highly competent. We rarely ever have workmanship or damage to property complaints. In fact, this is the only one I can think of in the last 5 years. 2. We only have orange ladders. Totally orange ladder, no blue in sight. El presidente comes back into the office, gets the message and confronts the crew that went out to her house. He asks them what happened and if they thought they were the cause of the paint. The crew leader answers el presidente saying, "We noticed the paint while we were on the ladder addressing the light issue. It was there before we were. We also noticed a BLUE ladder propped up by the side of her barn." What? A blue ladder belonging to her husband by the barn? I am shocked and appalled. Seriously. Who does that? Who calls and complains, blaming something on us that their husband did? El presidente returns the lady's call and gets her answering machine. He leaves a message stating that he doesn't think we did anything to damage her home. He stresses the fact that we have orange ladders, not blue. He also mentions the mysterious blue ladder by her barn and eludes to the fact that the blue ladder may have been the cause of the paint marks. HH calls back the next morning still adamant that we caused this damage, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Psycho. Long story short, we didn't charge her for the work we completed on her outside lights. I guess she finally got a clue and got over the damage to her precious, important, state of the art siding.

Still VP of Customer Relations.

It's an old, but funny story. I had to share it!